The Truth About Said Shamil in the Light of Archival Documents, Part 1

Introduction

I have already studied Said Shamil’s influence on the North Caucasian émigré movement during the revolutionary and interwar periods within the possible limits of the content of my book titled "Caucasian Mountaineers in the Grip of the Great Powers" in 2022. I also published an article on the same issue in a scientific magazine in Turkey in 2022. However, due to the limited space allocated in the magazine, it was not possible to convey many details to the reader on the subject. In another article published in the English language in Russia in 2022, I published a more detailed scientific article on the subject. Although a lot much more space was allocated in the journal compared to other articles, it was still not possible to convey detailed information at the level I desired. It seems I will not be able to publish the documents about Said Shamil into a book in the short term, as I have recently been working on the Haydar Bammat archive in IRCICA.  So, I have decided to publish a more detailed work about Said Shamil’s influence on the North Caucasian émigré movement without limiting ourselves to the restricted page capacity of magazines.

Following the publications in 2022, I received different reactions on the subject from various circles. While some friends were pleased that the wrongs that they knew were true for years were revealed, some friends were very disturbed by the fact that their memory was broken. Some friends expressed their dissatisfaction as they thought that every truth should not be disclosed. Some people, whom I cannot call friends and who perceived the information contained in the documents as a direct attack against the Imam’s grandson, overtly threatened me. Of course, it is out of the question for me to be a tool for concealing the truth just because some people are going to be disturbed by it.

To understand Said Shamil, I think it would be conducive to first focus on the details of his identity that are not well known till now. He was officially known as Mehmed Said Shamil. He is the son of Muhammed Kamil, the youngest son of Imam Shamil, the legendary Avar leader of the Russo-Caucasian Wars. Despite Said Shamil’s Turkish citizenship, it’s incredibly strange that there has been no single archival document exists about him in the researchable state archives of the Republic of Turkey until a few months ago. What has been known about him was all based on oral histography and subjective narratives and the general opinion about him was that he was a great patriot and a hero.

Since my focus will be on Said Shamil’s influence on the events of the revolutionary and interwar years, I did not concentrate much on his genealogical story.  Thus, his childhood period is not analyzed deeply in this work. As new archival sources became available at the French, Polish, and Russian archives as of the second decade of the 2000s, it became possible to have a better opinion of the activities of Said Shamil during the years of the Bolshevik invasion of the Caucasus and the interwar period of the world.

Said Shamil was born from Muhammed Kamil Pasha’s marriage to Nebiha Hanum. Some historians claim that it is highly probable that his mother was originally a Dagestani, while others claim that she was a Circassian. However, there has been no evidence confirming these claims with credible sources. In a letter communication between Said Shamil’s uncles, Gazi Muhammed, and Muhammed Shafi, it had been stated Muhammed Kamil was going to marry the 13-year-old daughter of a teacher named Muhammed Said Efendi living in Medina.[1] So, the only credible information about his mother is that she was the daughter of a teacher from Medina which makes all statements claiming Nebiha Hanum’s ethnicity as Circassian or Dagestani hypothetical.

 

After spending his childhood in the Arab lands Said Shamil came to Istanbul to have a better education. Although he claims in his own statements that he had his education at Galatasaray High School (Mekteb-i Sultani), this information could not be verified by the records of Galatasaray High School.

Said Shamil became familiar with the North Caucasian émigré circles only after he came to Istanbul. Thanks to the kinship established between the Shamil and Shaply families, Said Shamil became one of the regulars of the Circassian Union and Solidarity Association (Çerkes İttihad ve Teavün Cemiyeti — ÇİTC) during his education in Istanbul. Due to the marriage of Gazi Muhammed’s daughter Amire Nafiset with Osman Ferit Pasha, the imperial guard of Medina and a member of the Shaply family, one of the prominent Ubykh families, Shaply Hussein Tosun Bey has guided and mentored Said Shamil during his stay in Istanbul.

It was quite remarkable that 17-year-old Said Shamil was among the many experienced politicians and statesmen in the photograph taken with the members of the ÇİTC, in memory of the members of the North Caucasian Government’s visit to Istanbul in May 1918.

Despite some information that claims that Muhammed Kamil Pasha moved first to Damascus and then to Istanbul at the beginning of the Arab Revolt, a British archival document dated 18 December 1918 states that Muhammed Kamil Pasha was still in Damascus on this date. Besides, the same archival source proves that Muhammed Kamil Pasha, who has not performed any active role among the North Caucasian émigré circles at the earlier stages of his life, tried to play a very decisive role by the end of the 1st World War. Muhammed Kamil Pasha in his letter to the British Government stated that he was ready to provide his service if the British Government would provide the necessary support. The youngest son of the legendary Imam declared that he could start and assume the leadership of an anti-Bolshevik resistance in the North Caucasus where the name of his deceased father’s name is still very influential on the local population.

There is no clue if the British command in the Middle East responded to the application of Muhammed Kamil, but according to some secondary sources, in the last National Assembly held in the Kaitish-Kort (today Keshni Kert), near Tzontoroi region of mountainous Chechnya (on May 6, 10–11, 1920, the participants decided to invite the youngest son of Imam Shamil to embrace the spiritual leadership of the resistance movement against the communists and Muhammed Kamil declined the invitation by attributing his weak health condition, and he proposed to his 19-year-old son, Said Shamil, his place.[2] However, such a piece of information can’t be verified in primary sources.  The archival papers in the primary sources showing the meeting minutes and the final declaration of National Madjlis do not include any single mention of Muhammed Kamil Pasha.

Since Muhammed Kamil lived for another thirty-one years after that date, it does not seem very realistic to consider the claims raised in the given secondary sources as reliable. As a matter of fact, in the telegram sent by the French High Commissioner Abel Chevalley to Prime Minister Aristide Briand on February 11, 1921, he stated that the North Caucasus Revolutionary Committee in Tbilisi considers one of the reasons for the failure of the rebellion is that the French command center in Istanbul discovered Said Shamil in October 1919, and brought him to Dagestan.[3]

From these statements, it is well understood that there were many different dynamics in the background of Said Shamil’s nomination for a task in the North Caucasus under the preference and protection of the French occupation forces in Istanbul. It must also be considered that ÇİTC’s representatives had been negotiating issues such as the return of the North Caucasian immigrants to the homeland and the alliance against the Bolshevik occupation with the Entente in Istanbul in the same period. It is understood that Said Shamil was supposed to undertake a coordination function between the Entente, the Caucasian immigration in the Ottoman lands, and the rebels in the Caucasus. Said Shamil’s undertaking of the spiritual leadership of the North Caucasian resistance can be an argument only in the abstract expressions in the historiography based on the rhetoric of heroism. Additionally, it is obvious that a 19-year-old young man cannot provide anything but only moral support to the people under the name «Shamil» in the presence of dozens of other experienced and knowledgeable political, military figures, and spiritual leaders who took part in the North Caucasian resistance against Bolshevism.

Said Shamil, who arrived in Tbilisi in June 1920 and stayed there for three months, could reach Dagestan only by September due to the dangerous environment on the way to the north. It is not possible to give any specific example where Said Shamil commanded a considerable military operation and gained any success in the conflicts between the mountain resistance and the Bolshevik forces during his seven months stay in the mountains of Dagestan and Chechnya. There is also no single statement supporting Said Shamil’s direct interference in the military confrontations in the Bolshevik figures’ works such as Samurski Efendiyev, Todorski, Taho-Godi, and Kashkaev, who conveyed the events of the period in detail, albeit from a Bolshevik point of view.  Therefore, it can be assumed that the function of Said Shamil at this last point of resistance was limited to moral and motivational support deriving from the name of his grandfather. Following the victory of the Red Armies in the entire Caucasus in February 1921, Said Shamil was obliged to return to Asia Minor after staying some time with Najmudin from Gotsatl (Gotsinki).

At the time when Said Shamil was back in the Entente-occupied Asia Minor, there was a civil war between the supporters of the Ottoman dynasty and the so-called nationalist groups that formed an alternative government in Ankara. In addition, the hatred towards the Entente and support promises of the Soviets’ caused a rapid spread of sympathy for Bolshevism in the entire Asia Minor. Similar to the other representatives of the Government of the former Republic of the North Caucasus who has been seeking refuge in Asia Minor, the political climate in Asia Minor was making life more difficult also for Said Shamil as well, who was now declared as «hostile» by the Soviets.

Bolshevik highlander Najmudin Samurski Efendiev and the prominent communist leader Sergo Orjonikidze met Kazim Karabekir Pasha on the border of Alexandropol (today Gyumri) in mid-May 1921 and requested him to extradite Said Shamil to them, who was known to have fled to Turkey. Kazim Karabekir Pasha, on the other hand, stated that Said Shamil was wanted in Turkey as an Entente agent, and assured his Bolshevik interlocutors that he would be punished as soon as he was caught6. It is not clear yet if any prosecution or action was taken against Said Shamil in Turkey. It seems his case was most likely covered up by Said Shamil’s cousin, Shaply Mehmed Shamil, the eldest son of Osman Ferit Pasha from his marriage to Gazi Muhammed’s daughter Nafiset Shamil.

 

Cem KUMUK
Istanbul, 13 August 2023

To be Continued…

Next week; Said Shamil’s early affiliation with the political immigration of the North Caucasus

[1] Magomed A. Gamzaev, Shamil Imamasul Limalazul Kaghtal. Makhachkala, 2017. P. 157. (Click for access to the e-copy of the book)  

[2] Hizal A.H. Kuzey Kafkasya Hürriyet ve İstiklal Davası. Ankara, 1961. S. 81–82. (Click for access to the e-copy of the book)